Carlton Benjamin Goodlett

Carlton Benjamin Goodlett (July 23, 1914 – January 25, 1997) was an American physician, newspaper publisher, political power broker, and civil rights leader in San Francisco, California. and later migrated to Omaha, Nebraska. He was the youngest of two children. His sister's name is unknown, but when she was 5 and Carlton was 3 years old, her dress caught fire from the embers from the home's fireplace, and the house subsequently caught on fire too. She managed to get Carlton out but did not herself survive.

Goodlett was a very precocious child, often following his sister to school, being too young to attend. The teacher turned him away repeatedly, until she decided to take him seriously, and let him stay.

Education He received a bachelor's degree in 1935 from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and in 1938 he became one of the first African Americans to earn a doctorate in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, at the age of 23. At the same time, he emerged as a civil rights advocate. As president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1947–49, he protested The City's discrimination against hiring blacks for its public transportation system, demanded improvements in public housing, and exposed the exclusion of blacks and Jews from draft boards in San Francisco. and established it as the leading black newspaper in Northern California. Using his combined newspapers to become a political force in San Francisco, Goodlett cultivated friendships with leading black entertainers, artists and politicians, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Until Phil Burton's death in 1983, Goodlett was one of his closest allies. Phil Burton became a member of the California State Assembly and later a powerful member of Congress. Burton's brother, California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton, credited Goodlett as being "singularly responsible" for initially electing Phil Burton to office. and financed his $7,500 campaign. In 1966 Goodlett ran for governor himself as a protest against Pat Brown. He finished third out of six candidates in the Democratic primary, with 95,000 votes. Until the emergence of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, Goodlett was the dominant figure in San Francisco's civil rights movement in securing jobs for African Americans and appointments to important city commissions that blacks had never held. In November 1978, Jones committed suicide in Guyana with more than 900 followers. Goodlett later said, "You don't need glasses for hindsight. Everybody is running like hell away from Jim Jones now, but none of us knew at the time."

On January 18, 1999, following a unanimous vote by the 11-member San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the official address of San Francisco City Hall was changed to 1 Carlton B. Goodlett Place. The name appears on the street sign for two blocks of Polk Street and on all stationery, business cards, and mail to and from the building.